A Warm Body
by merduff
Summary: "Beware of people who dislike cats." – Irish proverb. FDR and Churchill liked cats; Hitler hated them. Wilson knows which side he's on.


House is right. It galls Wilson to admit that, but he knows that he hasn't been the best company recently. Ever since Sam left, he's been a little depressed, which is hardly surprising. A different kind of friend would understand that the end of a relationship is traumatic - despite years of practice - and make allowances for a lack of scintillating conversation, but House has never been that kind of friend. That doesn't mean Wilson wants to be the one to make allowances, especially ones that include being manipulated, lied to, and drugged.

He misses Sam. He misses waking up with their bodies twined together, the warmth and comfort of holding another person. He misses the sound of her laughter, or just the sound of her breathing as they read quietly together. He even misses finding the milk in the fridge door, or the dishwasher haphazardly loaded, because a little chaos is better than an empty home. He made the mistake of saying as much to House a few days before Cuddy's dinner party.

"If all you're looking for is a warm body to cuddle and a little mess in your life, you may as well just get a dog," House replied. "Or better yet, a cat that alternates between self-absorbed affection and hostile indifference. Seems to be what you're attracted to."

In retrospect, he really should have expected to be drugged, or worse. House's tolerance for misery in other people has never been high, unless he's the one to cause it.

* * *

><p>Growing up, Wilson never had a pet, with the exception of a goldfish that committed suicide by jumping out of the bowl after less than a week. His father had a mild allergy to dander that he brought up every time one of his sons tried using puppy dog eyes to get a puppy dog.<p>

In his second year of med school, however, his roommate brought home a cat, claiming it was a day away from the gas chamber. Wilson knew he was being manipulated, but he was helpless to resist when the cat twined around his ankles. She was pitch-black with a streak of white on her head. His roommate said her name was Blackie, but Danny had every issue of _X-Men_, so Wilson called her Storm.

They managed to hide her from the landlord for nearly three months, but one night Wilson came home to a note on the door with the ultimatum that either the cat went or they did. Wilson found a new apartment that allowed pets the next day, but before he could sign a lease, his roommate's parents came by and took Storm back with them to Connecticut. Wilson missed the warm weight curled against his side while he read, and if that had something to do with how quickly he fell into a relationship with Sam, he would never admit it to House.

* * *

><p>The Friday before Valentine's - a day that Wilson has been dreading since every store became saturated in shades of red and pink - Nora tells him that Maja Vukelich in apartment 3C passed away. "I don't know what's going to happen to Sarah," she says, as they wait for the elevator. "I'd take her, but Callie is very territorial. They'd tear each other apart. But if I take her to the animal shelter, they'll just put her down. Who would adopt a diabetic cat?"<p>

Wilson remembers Sunday afternoons in Maja's apartment, drinking tea and listening to stories about Dubrovnik before the war, Sarah placid and purring on his lap. He's sorry he wasn't there for Maja at the end, though they both knew that her heart was winding down.

"I will," he says. He thinks Maja would approve, even if Nora looks skeptical. "At least I'm used to giving injections."

"I thought you saved the dirty work for the nurses," Nora replies. They formed a tentative friendship after House moved out, and she was sympathetic when Sam left, but she's never going to stop thinking of him as a mendacious dirtbag at heart.

Still, she helps him move the cat supplies to his apartment and stays for coffee while Sarah prowls around her new home. Already the apartment feels less empty.

* * *

><p>Wilson returned from the conference in New Orleans to a failed marriage and an empty apartment, not to mention the lingering effects of a brutal hangover, but that at least he didn't regret. He found it hard to sleep at night. He'd never lived alone longer than a weekend, and the silence in the apartment was more disturbing than a keg party.<p>

One afternoon, he stopped in front of a pet store and watched a litter of kittens tumble around their cage. He fell instantly in love with a tiny silver tabby with bright blue eyes, but he was still working long hours at two jobs and that wasn't fair to even the most self-sufficient cat. When a clerk smiled and waved at him, he hurried away, embarrassed, as if he'd done something shameful. He returned the next day, though, but the tabby was gone.

A week later, House arrived on his doorstep - literally. Wilson came home from a double-shift to find him sleeping slumped against his door.

"Mercy fired me," he said, once he had a beer in his hand and control of the remote. "Something about misuse of hospital resources and chronic insubordination."

"Imagine that," Wilson said. "What are you going to do?"

"There's an opening in nephrology at Princeton General. The rest of the department are morons, but it means I don't have to move." He looked dismissively around the apartment, bare and bleak after the elimination of Sam's possessions. "What about you?"

"I haven't decided yet." He'd applied for a fellowship at Johns Hopkins, but there was no point in going to Baltimore now, and he didn't think he could stand to stay in Philadelphia. "I thought I might apply to UCSF or MD Anderson. Get a fresh start." When House didn't offer a scathing assessment of his chances of being accepted into two of the best programs in the country, Wilson glanced over at him.

"Columbia has a two-year clinical medical oncology program," House said, before frowning at the television. "Are these the only channels you get?" he complained. "You're a lousy host."

"And you're an uninvited guest," Wilson retorted, but he dug out the German porn film his brother had sent him as a divorce present. A six-pack later, he passed out on the couch. House stole his bed, but it was the best sleep he'd had in weeks. The next day, he sent an application package to Columbia

* * *

><p>"Did you really adopt a three-legged cat after Bonnie left you?" Cuddy asks during their regular Tuesday lunch.<p>

Wilson stabs a forkful of salad a little harder than he intended, the tines scraping across the plate. "Is that what House told you? It was an old cat. He had arthritis in one of his hind legs, so he limped a bit."

Cuddy laughs. "I should have known he was exaggerating. He told Lucas that your first wife had a wooden leg."

"I think that's called transference," Wilson replies. Sam was on crutches when they first met - she'd sprained an ankle badly playing softball - and he quickly progressed from pack mule and grocery schlepper to bed partner. He must have mentioned that during one of his post-divorce drunken ramblings. House acts like he's ignoring him most of the time, but Wilson knows that he's constantly storing away tidbits of information to twist into his own reality.

"He also said you turned into a hoarder recluse." Cuddy tries to sound like she thinks it's a ridiculous idea, but Wilson can hear the hint of a question in her voice.

"House has turned historical revisionism into an art form," he complains, but he doesn't sound any more convincing than Cuddy did. "I was staying in a crappy basement suite until the divorce was settled. There wasn't room to swing a cat, which I'm sure House tested first-hand. And maybe I did stop answering his calls, but it was for his own protection. If he'd said, 'I told you it wouldn't last' one more time, I would have killed him." It's never too late, he thinks.

"He's worried about you," Cuddy says. "I think it's sweet." She makes a face. "I can't believe I just used that word in connection with House. He does want you to be happy, though."

"Then he should stop pushing me to have meaningless sexual encounters that will just remind me how pathetic my life is." The words come out before Wilson can stop them. The tips of his ears burn and he stares down at his half-eaten lunch.

"James..."

Wilson flinches at the soft touch on his arm and the pity in her voice. "I should go," he says. "I've got a patient. I need to prepare." He stands up and hurries away before Cuddy can say anything.

* * *

><p>The cat and the apartment belonged to one of his patients. She'd celebrated the news of her remission by planning a trip to Europe, but she didn't have any close friends or family willing to look after the cat for an extended period. That should have tipped Wilson off, but a week of sleeping on House's sofa had destroyed his back and what remained of his spirit, so when she offered him a place to stay in exchange for cat-sitting duties, it seemed like a solution to both their problems.<p>

The apartment was actually a basement suite, with below-code ceiling heights and a tiny shower stall in the bathroom, but it was only for a month, and Wilson rarely had time for a leisurely bath anyway. He was formally introduced to Chula, a gorgeous Seal Point Siamese, and given a list of detailed instructions for care that was a little insulting to someone with a dozen years of post-secondary education.

They didn't get along at first. Siamese cats, Wilson knew, often bonded strongly to a single person, and Chula had no time for anyone other than his owner. For the first week, he yowled piteously, despite all attempts to distract him with toys and cat treats, and Wilson was forced to resort to ear plugs and sleeping pills to get any rest. But one morning he found Chula waiting for him outside the bedroom door and instead of backing away when Wilson tried to pat him, he sniffed Wilson's hand and allowed his ears to be scratched.

That night, Chula followed him into the bedroom and curled up on the end of Wilson's bed. "You're lonely, too," Wilson murmured, stroking the soft fur until a purr rumbled beneath his fingertips. "We both miss someone we love." He didn't know whether he missed Bonnie or the idea of being married to Bonnie, but either way, the end result was that he was alone.

* * *

><p>"Your time is up," House pronounces as he bursts into Wilson's office, which is unfortunate, as Wilson is meeting with a patient who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. He reassures his patient that it's a very treatable form, and that she has a great deal of time left, though perhaps the same can't be said for Dr. House.<p>

"Don't you have your own patient to traumatize?" Wilson asks, once he has ushered her out of the office and away from House. "Why don't you go down to the clinic and whip some hypochondriacs into a frenzy." It's a terrible suggestion, Wilson realizes as he says it. House will just tell everybody they have cancer and his workload will skyrocket.

"Tormenting you is much more fun," House replies. "Have you given the furball away to one of your patients yet? Surely, there's some sick kid just dying for a sick cat. And I do mean that literally."

"I'm not giving Sarah away," Wilson says, though he has considered giving her to a hospice, where he knows she'll be pampered. But he's no more ready to let her go than he is to throw himself into another doomed relationship. "And don't even think about cat-napping her and tossing her in the river." He doesn't actually think House would do that - strategically opened windows are more his method - but a lingering tickle in his sinuses reminds him that House doesn't care about means in the pursuit of his ends.

"You'd thank me for it later," House says, but the conditional means he's already rejected the option. "There's a new nurse in the ER. She should be traumatized enough by now to attract you."

Wilson ignores him. "You think you know what attracts me? Give me a number. I know you have a database of all the prostitutes in the Princeton area."

"You don't sleep with hookers," House says suspiciously.

"And in all the years I've known you, you've never wanted me to be in a relationship, so this isn't about me finding a soul mate. This is about you feeling guilty about getting what you wanted." When House just looks away, Wilson knows he's right. "If I'm just going to have sex that will make me feel empty and crappy the next day, then I may as well pay for it up front."

Only the slight pause tells Wilson that he scored a point. "And you think emasculating yourself with a cat is a better option?" House retorts.

Wilson imagines a cat carding a private and painful place and winces. "She's declawed," he says as his cell phone chimes to remind him that Sarah is due for her next shot. Rearranging his schedule around her needs should have been inconvenient, but he already has gaps built into his day to deal with House's insanity. Compared to House, Sarah is decidedly low maintenance.

* * *

><p>After his third divorce, Wilson spent nearly two years in a long-stay hotel. Pets weren't allowed, but as far as Wilson was concerned, he had proven himself incapable of looking after another living creature, at least outside a clinical setting.<p>

He had known, even while he was arguing with House, that the relationship with Grace was unethical. It didn't matter that he'd never intended to sleep with her, much less move into her apartment. Just like it didn't matter that he was only trying to protect House when he made the deal with Tritter. Motives didn't matter, actions did.

At times he had been unbearably lonely, especially during the long days when House was in the ketamine coma and the longer weeks when House wanted nothing to do with him. Even House might have agreed that a cat was preferable to anti-depressants, but by the time it had come to pharmaceuticals, moving to a pet-friendly residence had been beyond his emotional resources.

And then Amber came into his life: aloof and self-reliant, but fiercely affectionate once he'd broken through her barriers. For those few brief months, he'd been happier than he'd ever imagined possible, back-breaking sleeping arrangements and territorial skirmishes with House aside. He'd weaned himself off the anti-depressants just in time for his world to shatter.

Everybody lies, House loved to say, but Wilson's world was governed by a different truism: everybody dies.

* * *

><p>After Cuddy broke up with him, House abandoned the crusade to get Wilson laid, and Wilson was too busy trying to keep House from going completely off the rails to worry about his own personal life. He failed, of course. He could no more save House from himself than he could make a marriage last or keep his brother safe.<p>

When first Danny and then Sam came back into his life, he thought he was wrong, that permanence was a possibility. But the Danny he visits on weekends is no longer the little brother who followed him around like a jittery shadow; he's a stranger staring back at him through over-medicated eyes. He still doesn't understand why Sam gave up on them again; how she could tell him he's changed, and then leave because he hasn't.

And now House, who through it all has been Wilson's one improbable constant, is gone, leaving behind the wreckage of more than just Cuddy's dining room.

After the trip to the ER - Princeton General, because the rumours will start soon enough without his X-rays providing black and white proof - he returns home, exhausted to his very core. He's survived med school, residency, and years of patients who don't die during office hours, but he's never been this physically and emotionally depleted, not even after Amber's death.

It could be the painkillers the ER gave him - he's never reacted well to medication - but he knows that he's been running on empty for a long time. Eventually the engine has to seize.

Fortunately, Sarah isn't due for a shot until morning, because he doesn't trust his fine motor skills. He only just manages to put out fresh food for her before collapsing on the couch. He knows he should eat as well, but he has no more appetite than he does energy and it's all he can do to kick his shoes off.

After a minute of satisfied slurping and crunching and a defiant scratch on the couch, disguised as a stretch, Sarah jumps up next to him. He lets her sniff and nudge his casted wrist, scratching absently between her ears. Satisfied with the new smell, she crawls into the crook of his arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder. She's purring, a soothing rumble against his breastbone, and he rests his cheek against her soft fur, glad to have something to hold on to in the empty days ahead.


End file.
